How to Fix Common SSL Issues in WordPress (Beginner’s Guide)

Moving a WordPress site to SSL can sometime result in unexpected issues. If you’re adding SSL to an existing WordPress site and are running into errors, then you’re in luck. In this guide, we will cover how to fix the most common issues with SSL / HTTPs in WordPress.

What is SSL / HTTPS and Why You Should Start Using it Right Away?

SSL / HTTPS is an encryption method that secures the connection between users’ browser and your WordPress hosting server. This makes it harder for hackers to eavesdrop on the connection.

Each SSL / HTTPS enabled site is issued a unique SSL certificate for identification purposes. If a server is pretending to be on HTTPS, and its certificate doesn’t match, then most modern browsers will warn the user from connecting to the website.

Last year, Google announced plans to improve overall web security by encouraging website owners to start using SSL / HTTPS.

As part of this plan, Google’s Chrome web browser now marks all websites without an SSL certificate as “Not Secure”.

The ‘Not Secure’ label in the browser’s address bar gives a bad impression to your customers about your business.

Upon activation, you need to visit Settings » SSL page to review plugin settings. Really Simple SSL works out of the box and will automatically take care of SSL / HTTPS settings and fix mixed content errors.

Note: The plugin attempts to fix mixed content errors by using output buffering technique. This can have a negative performance impact on your site. However, if you are using a caching plugin, then it will only impact the first page load.

2. Manually Fixed Mixed Content Errors in WordPress

This method requires manual troubleshooting, but it is more effective and better for performance.

First, you need to make sure that you are using HTTPS in WordPress settings. Go to Settings » General page and make sure that WordPress Address and Site Address options have HTTPS URLs.

If you see URLs starting with HTTP, then you need to go ahead and change them to HTTPS. Don’t forget to click on the save changes button to store your settings.

Next, you need to find old HTTP URLs in your WordPress database and replace them with the new HTTPS URLs.

Upon activation, you need to visit Tools » Better Search Replace page. In the ‘Search’ field, you need to add your website URL with HTTP. After that, add your website URL with https in the ‘Replace’ field.

The plugin will now update URLs in your WordPress database.

If you are still seeing mixed content errors, then the next step is to troubleshoot URLs in your WordPress theme and plugins.

Using your browser’s Inspect tool, you will need to locate the resources causing the errors and where they are loading from.

For theme resources, you will need to find them in your WordPress theme and replace HTTP with HTTPS.

This part can be a bit difficult for beginners as they will have to look for the URLs in all theme files.

If you are unable to find them yourself, then you can also reach out to theme developer and request them to update their theme. They will need to use WordPress best practices to load files, which will fix the HTTP/HTTPS issue.

Same goes for the mixed content loaded by a WordPress plugin. We don’t recommend editing plugin files yourself to change the URLs. You should notify the plugin developer and request them for an update. Meanwhile, you can disable the plugin on your site or find an alternative plugin.

3. Fix Too Many Redirects Errors After Moving to SSL / HTTPS

WordPress allows you to enforce SSL / HTTPS for the admin area by entering the following line into your wp-config.php file.

define('FORCE_SSL_ADMIN', true);

However, in some scenarios this setting alone would cause ‘Too many redirects‘ error. To fix this, you will need to add the following code to your wp-config.php file just before the line that says ‘That’s all, stop editing! Happy blogging.’.

4. Fix WordPress HTTP to HTTPS Redirect

WordPress will not automatically redirect HTTP requests to HTTPS unless you tell it to do so. If you are using a plugin like Really Simple SSL, then it would take care of redirects. Otherwise, you will have to manually set up redirects.

To set up HTTP to HTTPS redirect, you need to add the following code to your .htaccess file.

We hope this article helped you fix some common issues with SSL / HTTPS in WordPress. If you run into an issue that’s not covered in this article, then please leave a comment to let us know. We will update the article with the solution. You may also want to see our ultimate WordPress security guide with step by step instructions for beginners to secure their WordPress websites.

16 Comments

Hi guys, first of all, thanks for your great job sharing your knowledge with noobs like me

I’ve just done all the SSL certificate stuff for the first time and got something that seems weird.On the browser that I’ve created the WordPress site and done everything, the website displays just fine . The connection appears to be fully secure and green. But when opening on any other browser or machine, it displays like rubbish. Also, here I get a “Your connection to this site is not fully secure”. When using the Inspect tool, I get 6 of those mixed content errors.

So.. According to #2 I changed the http to https:, so since than error 404 appears when I try to visit the site with http, if I try with https, than it tells me that this is not a secure site, and it gets blocked.
I need a solution ASAP, please!!!!

Are there ways to fix issues like these if you cannot access the WordPress dashboard? Very often, if there is an SSL issue, the web browser will not even let you access the login page. I would assume you should be able to manually replace links in the database without using a plugin.

I have a web site that I installed Real Simple SSL and Better Search and Replace plugins. I activated both, and ran the Better Search and Replace tool. My problem is when I go to login I get the message (The page isn’t redirecting properly An error occurred during a connection)
This is in the most recent version of Firefox and I cleared cookies and cache.
I also tried this in Safari and it said that “Too many redirects occurred This might occur if you open a page that is redirected to open another page which then is redirecterd to open the original page.

What should I change or search for to get the wp-admin login page to work properly?

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